Two key themes presented themselves during the panel discussion – investment and digital literacy. Elva Lima talked about how private investment in broadband infrastructure is helping minority communities by giving them affordable access to broadband. She also stressed the importance of partnerships between broadband providers and local organizations to ensure that the community understands the value of broadband. This is especially significant in that recent studies show “relevance” as a primary barrier to adoption.

When asked what the power of broadband meant to him, Chris Boyer stated that he sees broadband in three basic terms. First, broadband is an enabler. Broadband allows for online applications that benefit almost every industry, including healthcare, the environment, public safety, education, and the economy. Second, broadband is a necessary tool that changes the way we go about our daily business. And third, broadband means investment. In California alone, AT&T invested over $7 billion in broadband infrastructure between 2007-2009. This level of investment not only means more people with access to broadband, but also job creation and growth. See more below in our interview following the event with Boyer.

Inez Gonzalez focused on the transformative power of broadband for minority communities, including giving them access to more jobs and financial aid. While Gonzalez cites price as another barrier to adoption, as we mentioned earlier price rarely makes it to the top of the page on the reasons why the non-adopters choose not to sign-up for high-speed Internet service. One of those reasons, digital literacy, is something Gonzalez elaborates on in our interview below, to include the importance of everyone in the community playing a role in helping people understand the life-enhancing benefits of broadband.

Stay tuned for future coverage of the Mabuhay Alliance Summits. The next one will take place in Chicago, IL on May 22, 2010.

As a utility executive and a technologist, I am seeing the communications industry and the energy industry come together in a way that I have not seen before. Nowhere is this intersection between technology and energy more apparent than in my hometown of San Diego, which is fast becoming the epicenter of a thing called smart grid.

What is a smart grid? While many definitions exist, I like to describe it as the convergence of information technologies, grid technologies, process automation, and communication technologies to build intelligence into the energy system. These attributes are absolutely necessary to support the integration of new renewable energy sources such as solar and wind, distributed generation such as rooftop solar panels on thousands of homes and businesses, electric vehicles, customer-side demand management, smart home technologies, and grid self-healing capabilities.

So why here, in San Diego, and why now?

Southern California has a unique set of conditions that place us at the forefront of a national–if not international–initiative to modernize and automate energy grid functions.

First, we have a very tech savvy population with San Diego ranked number two in the nation for broadband Internet adoption, according to the January 2009 issue of Forbes. And when it comes to the wireless industry, Southern California is world-class.

Second, San Diego is seeing an influx of renewable power, like solar and wind, and these place new challenges on our energy infrastructure. Specifically, San Diego Gas & Electric must be able to make up for these resources when the sun suddenly stops shining or the wind stops blowing. San Diego currently has over 6,600 solar roofs on its homes and businesses, which is more than any other city in California. Last year alone, San Diego Gas & Electric installed 16 megawatts of solar, and we are also developing new wind projects in our mountains including a recently announced project that could provide up to 120 megawatts of energy.

A third factor is Southern California’s early adoption of electric and hybrid vehicles which also place a set of new demands on the energy system.

Sempra Energy’s two utilities–San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Gas Company–provide energy to 23 million people across 24,000 square miles of Southern California. How we serve these customers and fulfill our mission is in the midst of a dramatic transformation. In fact, we expect the next 10 years will hold more changes than the past century!

Fortunately, the Sempra Energy utilities have been investing in technology and establishing best practices to position our organization to lead the industry through this shift.

To specifically advance our smart grid transformation, we have re-engineered many technology and infrastructure systems installing electronic sensors in several substations, trialing new automation technologies that are moving us toward a self-healing grid, and more.

San Diego Gas & Electric will be the first utility in the U.S. to complete installation of smart meters that have full two-way communications, in-home control and remote connect/disconnect capabilities. Roll-out has begun and 1.4 million smart meters will be installed across the service territory by 2011.

The utility is also involved in numerous electric vehicle projects and new transportation technologies to provide this growing transportation sector with the energy infrastructure it will need.

Our industry has begun a massive shift from a static “pipes and wires” approach in communications to a networked, automated and sophisticated real-time communications architecture. And in that shift, wireless communication becomes absolutely essential: The smart grid will be built on a foundation of robust, secure, and pervasive wireless services.

To illustrate, San Diego Gas & Electric’s energy grid has approximately 220,000 wood poles, 160,000 transformers, 18,000 miles of overhead and underground lines, more than 14,000 structures, and 275 substations. These assets are spread across a service territory that ranges from dense urban centers to sparsely populated rural communities, mountain peaks as high as 7,000 feet and deserts that dip below sea level.

Initially hundreds, then thousands and possibly millions of sensors will be installed across these miles. And the only way to communicate with these assets cost-effectively and reliably is with wireless technology.

San Diego Gas & Electric currently uses wireless communication across the utility and has relied on it and our friends in the wireless industry for years.

During the 2007 California wildfires, we called upon wireless communication in a new way to overcome a major crisis. We lost 1,800 utility poles and 35 miles of powerlines, thousands of customers were without power, and we’d lost voice and data communications too.

To support San Diego Gas & Electric’s emergency response, three innovative wireless solutions were developed by the utility’s IT group and worked beautifully. The first was in partnership with San Diego company Proximetry and included a seven-mile point-to-point 802.11a wireless communication link with 802.11 b and g hotspots supporting VoIP and data communication between temporary command centers and our data center. This solution restored high-bandwidth communication for our field employees within only days and was critical to restoring power for our customers.

The second wireless solution was in partnership with Tachyon and included satellite communications that brought several of the more remote communities back into the network.

The third solution was mobile. Through a pre-existing mutual cooperation initiative with the San Diego County Regional Communications System, we were able to integrate our 900 MHz mobile communications with the county’s 800 MHz public safety network. This provided interoperability and communication between public safety and utility personnel.

That’s an extreme example. But our utility communications serve a system that is under regular stress every day due to San Diego’s location at an energy cul-de-sac, constrained by a transmission system that places us, literally at the end of the line. This makes balancing load and generation a tightrope walk.

To complicate the situation, San Diego Gas & Electric is increasing its reliance on renewables such as wind and solar energy. State regulators have set a target for all California utilities to secure 20% of our energy from renewable sources in 2010, and we have gone above and beyond that to voluntarily adopt a target of 33% by 2020. To manage this shift without jeopardizing reliability given the intermittent nature of sunshine and wind power, we require a rock-solid communications backbone. We need to be able to redistribute load or switch to stored energy the minute a cloud passes over the sun or the wind drops.

These constraints make our smart grid vision imperative and, in fact, mission critical.

As a smart grid leader, our communications challenges are sure to be faced in the near future by other utilities around the country as they follow in our footsteps, including:

Coverage

Smart grid applications will need wireless coverage over 100% of our grid assets and 100% of our customer locations. That’s a tall order. Today’s 3G wireless service leaves gaps in our service territory that must be filled.

Capacity

Even though each endpoint may not consume or produce much capacity, when you’ve got millions of them online it adds up pretty quickly.

Performance

Any way you want to measure performance – latency, availability, peak throughput – we are going to need a new level of wireless performance for smart grid.

Security

The energy grid has always been critical national infrastructure and the smart grid even more so. As we add computing and communication nodes to our energy grid, we have got to be sure we’ve taken security and system integrity into account.

And, of course, cost is an important criterion as we evaluate our options.

Within the next decade, smart grids will be the norm—but the sooner we can address the communications needs of the grid, the sooner we can achieve this vision.

We recently submitted two Recovery Act stimulus applications to accelerate our smart grid vision, and like many of you, are awaiting word on the applications.

One is for a next-generation wireless network. It will serve as our pervasive communications backbone for San Diego Gas & Electric’s current, pending and future smart grid initiatives.

The second project is a demonstration that will connect our existing microgrid project in the Borrego Springs desert to the University of California, San Diego’s industrial microgrid at its La Jolla campus and allow the utility to demonstrate new smart grid best practices and technologies based on its existing smart grid foundation.

This is an exciting time for both the wireless and energy industries, and exciting times in San Diego County particularly. We have made a great start on the smart grid future here in Southern California. And we have some great partners in the communications industry.

One of the things I have been trying to get across in this blog post is a call to action for more robust, more pervasive wireless services. I think you’ll hear that call to action everywhere in the US – every utility will be looking for the same thing.

Today’s 3G wireless services have been incredibly useful in our mission, but we all need to step up our game for smart grid. 4G wireless can, in fact, become the foundation for smart grid, but only when it is deployed with the characteristics I’ve described above. Together, the communication and energy industries have an unprecedented opportunity to collaborate and build a great future for this region and for the nation. I for one am looking forward to that.

A growing number of people are using the Internet to tune into their favorite radio programs and music genres. As this trend continues, the Southern California Broadcasters Association is working to educate the public about new media technologies such as Internet radio, streaming video and audience web experiences.

You may be wondering just how many people are tuning into radio online. A study from Edison Media and Arbitron just released reveals that 17 percent of Americans checked out online radio in one week alone (the first week of April). The number represents a total of 42 million Americans and a doubling of the 2005 number. A survey from American Media Service, released this April, shows that more than a quarter (27%) of Americans report they’ve listened to an internet-only radio station. Among 18-24s, 47% had listened to an online station. Clearly, high speed Internet “broadband” is essential to these growing numbers and the more connected homes and businesses, the more people can benefit from tuning in online.

Be sure to check our website for more details coming out of our report-with a special focus on the latest trends €”iPods, mp3 players, social networking sites and the consumption of online video. All of these tools have the power to transform marketing and communications strategies.

Nothing has revolutionized our ability to communicate and connect the way that broadband has in only the past 10 years. At United Way, here in California as well as all across the country, we understand the benefits of broadband and how it has enabled us to create a vast and diverse network. United Way is a national organization with over 1,300 locally governed bodies dedicated to service, with our branch serving five counties in Northern California.

Thanks to various online tools, we are able to conduct business across this wide network as if we were all in the same office building. We can recruit new volunteers and organizations, educate the community about our services, organize new and exciting campaigns, and seek donations, all through our web site.

Not only does broadband make internal communication run more smoothly, but it also allows us to provide resources to those who are interested in getting involved. People can find out where their local United Way office is by using our online zip code finder. We have also used our website to organize volunteers for specific events, such as our upcoming “LIVE UNITED” to raise awareness for our regional volunteer activities. These online tools have made us more productive and have helped us to continue to serve the community in very unique ways.

Broadband has completely transformed the real estate industry and my company. Miller Realty Network is a prime example of how that transformation is benefiting both buyers and sellers. In today’s tech-savvy economy, homebuyers and sellers expect up-to-the-minute response times from their realtor. For buyers, broadband allows me to communicate information on listings and manage their paperwork online in real-time, ensuring that we stay ahead of the game in today’s 24/7 marketplace. For sellers, I am able to utilize broadband in order to apply all of the necessary and new marketing techniques to attract home buyers.

It’s no secret that California is going through some tough economic times, especially with regards to the housing market. Yet broadband is allowing professionals to continue to innovate and come up with new ways to reach their client base and in turn, spur the state’s economy. I manage my client base through a number of different online tools, including blogging, informational e-mails, e-newsletters, and constant updates to my website.

Without the ability to interact with clients and the marketplace at-large via online tools, it is possible that my realty business would not survive the current economic conditions. Thanks to broadband, I have been able to adapt to market conditions, and offer my clients 21st century services. Broadband has been a golden key, not only for my business, but for all of my clients who utilize my online resources.

The Wellness Task Force is a public/private endeavor that brings together educators, health advocates, health providers, athletes and legislators. Broadband is becoming an increasingly important resource to communicate with school districts throughout the state. The Wellness Task Force utilizes several broadband features such as e-newsletters (archived editions can be found on our website), a blog (Fit for Food), and networking sites such as Facebook to share our resources. I’m not sure what the Wellness Task Force would do without Survey Monkey. Our school project, Physical Education Research for Kids (PERK), utilizes this on-line system to conduct research and connect with teachers and administrators across the state. Broadband is helping to expand our outreach quickly and efficiently.

The more school districts we are able to reach — in person or online — the greater success we have in helping our kids develop good habits and lead healthy lifestyles.

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